Friday, 13 July 2018

Transforming Leo into an aurochs

Leo is from one of the best, if not the best, Sayaguesa herds that I have seen so far owned by Peter van Genejgen. Body shape, horn shape and skull shape are superb, the colour is good as well. The herd is slightly influenced by Alistana-Sanabresa, resulting in some reddish cows, giving the illusion of improved sexual dichromatism but bulls from the herd may happen to have a colour saddle (see here). For the European aurochs, there is only evidence for solidly black bulls. Leo has a colour saddle too, however, it still is a very beautiful bull and I think among the best Sayaguesa bulls I have seen. See his elongated head on this photo by Claus Kropp. When judging the body shape, keep in mind that it is still a young bull, it continue to gain weight while its skeleton will finish growing at the age of six years.The beauty of the bull and the photo inspired me to do another photo manipulation. I took the photo and edited it using GIMP, trying to transform it into what I imagine a European aurochs bull to have looked like. Here is the result (as it is based on a photo by Claus Kropp, I asked if it was ok to present it here):

I changed nothing about the proportions, head size or head shape. I think they are pretty aurochs-like in the original already. I enhanced the morphology of the trunk: the hump had to be enlarged, and I gave it a more slender waist in order to achieve a more wild cattle-like morpology. Also I removed the colour saddle, as there is only evidence for black bulls in Europe and I am not convinced that there were European aurochs bulls with a colour saddle (see here). I removed the original horns and painted aurochs horns. I could have also reduced the length of the dewlap, but I was not sure. For comparison, here is an animated GIF composed of the original Sayaguesa bull and the "aurochs":

As you see, Leo is not that far removed from the goal. I am sure that many of his offspring will resemble the aurochs to a large extent by domestic cattle standards.

Indeed, that's why I think that the Auerrind project has the potential to produce some really good quality individuals quite quick. A 75% Sayaguesa 25% Watussi might already have a high optical match with the goal.

Hello Daniel!Just wondering: Maybe it's difficult to achieve a European aurochs look because cattle were domesticated in south west Asia. Perhaps they had a saddle and smaller body size there. What do you think?Måns

That could indeed be a factor. Near Eastern aurochs were probably not as large as large European ones, and I cannot rule out that they had a saddle in this region as well. However, domestication always reduces sexual dimorphism and size is also affected in every species, so it is probably not the main reason - especially considering that there probably was a certain amount of local introgression from European aurochs and that there are some breeds that still retain a quite marked dimorphism in colour (f.e. Maronesa), and also a number of breeds that surpass 160cm in height for bulls (which might also be secondary, however).

Sorry if this is the wrong forum for this topic. But it appears the carnivora forum for the Aurochs has been down for over a week. I only see the front-page for it. Do you know anything about this Daniel? Maybe you know some of the moderators and can ask what happened? I am concerned about not getting as much news about the aurochs back breeding projects now.

They apparently changed the server and were too lazy to copy all the 150 pages of information in the thread, what means that the content is gone. It's the second time this has happened, which is why I now refrain from discussing there. I honestly think the carnivora forum is run by some kids, or at least the forum is dominated by kids. I used it only for the aurochs thread, which was really qualitative, but that thread is lost now.

The old aurochs thread on Carnivora Forum still exists, both in the original version and in some sort of backup version. For the original version, go tohttp://s4.zetaboards.com/Carnivora/topic/9481868/149/for the backup version (last backup done in May) go tohttps://www.tapatalk.com/groups/carnivora/aurochs-bos-primigenius-t8498.html

For accessing any bookmarked page of the old version of Carnivora Forum, all that’s gotta be done is to exchange the defunct personalized url ( http://carnivoraforum.com/ ) for the general url ( http://s4.zetaboards.com/Carnivora/ )

About this blog

This blog is on everything related to the so-called “breeding-back” of extinct animals: From the extinct animals themselves, over their often domestic descendants and dedomestication to news and facts about various breeding-back projects, reports and photos from my own breeding-back related trips. I try to have a balanced and fact-based approach to this subject and to dismantle many of the popular myths. Enjoy!

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About me

My major interest always have been extinct animals, from dinosaurs to Pleistocene megafauna and more recent extinctions. Besides that I am interested in evolution, genetics and ecology.
I am also an amateur animal artist, making drawings and models mostly of extinct animals.